University of Wisconsin–Madison

Island Time: UW-Madison Students’ Epic Research Roadtrip

SapeloNetLate yesterday afternoon, the first van pulled out of the Hasler Lab parking lot. Loaded down with a handful of Zoology 750 grad students, and all sorts of gear – from nets to shovels to bright orange construction fencing – the van was headed to catch a ferry, one that was eighteen hours and four states away. SapeloRoadTrip Why the insane overnight road trip? Well, because every two years, professors of the UW-Madison graduate course “Problems in Oceanography,” take a dozen or so students to Sapelo Island, right off the coast of Georgia for a week of field work. Students spend the first part of the semester devising research questions and planning experiments here in Madison and then head south for a stay at the University of Georgia’s Marine Institute, where they put those plans into action and enjoy island life for a week. SapeloNet2The whole thing makes us jealous.  But if we can’t all be there we can at least follow their adventures – the students are up on Twitter and Instagram as @UWSapelo and tagging their posts with #uwsapelo15 – follow along for funny comments, beautiful pictures and, every now and then, a cool tidbit of scientific fact. We’ll chronicle their adventure here on the blog throughout next week and can’t wait to see what they get up to. For now, there have been more than a few entertaining road trip updates:   Although the #UWSapelo15 crew has definitely taken the tweeting up a notch, when it comes to research projects, we’re not sure if anyone is ever going to top Sam Oliver crushing snails!   Dont forget – follow @UWSapelo and #uwsapelo15 on Twitter and Instagram! And well share more stories from the south soon.